2022 Aerodynamic Regulations Thread

[Hoffman900]

Why have planks at all. Suspensions/springs could be made to reach the limit of their movement range before the car bottoming out, right? Or is that too simple and obvious?

I also suspect the floor could be (mandatorily) shaped to make getting close to the tarmac disadvantageous.

IIRC the plank - and a related ride height increase - was introduced after events in Imola 94. The intention was to reduce cars' ability to utilise ground effect and improve safety related to bottoming out. Removing the plank would be a reversal of that good intention, so not something that would happen lightly even if technically feasible.

It always seemed like a clunky pseudo solution to me. It doesn't actually prevent bottoming out for one.

The point was that it is lower than the then flat floors, so when the car bottomed out, the entire flow didn’t choke and suddenly lose downforce, only the narrow center section bottomed out.

It was always there to provide a minimum of floor bottom to asphalt surface height.

Before that the entire floor was flat and could bottom out, thus reducing that gap to zero, and collapsing all underfloor flow, and suddenly kill downforce.

[vorticism]

Four seasons in, we see the entire field of cars are now derivatives of the RB18, 19, and 20. I don't mean this as a trite insult to the other teams, it's just a statement of fact. Good designs are copied. Same thing happened after the 2009 regs change, where by 2014 all the cars look liked derivatives of the RB5/6/7 line. Honda and Renault implemented split turbo. Everyone copied F-ducts and double diffusers.

In 2025 all teams afaik are using RB20 front sidepods except Alpine who have a combo of RB19 & RB20 front sidepods. All teams are using RB18/19 rear sidepods. Front pullrod now more common than pushrod. All teams as far as I've seen are using RB18 curled floor fences and RB18 floor boat section steps.

This convergence explains the 2024 & 2025 season. RB's primary advantage was, as before, in aero and chassis, but now everyone has their advantage, which leaves suspension, tyre management, strat, team ops, and drivers as differentiators. McLaren are apparently very good at suspension and tyre management (whether by strat or by hardware), and they have two excellent drivers. Williams must also be strong in some of these areas.

[alsee]

I just watched a youtube video and it made me wonder if the mechanism displayed in it could be implemented in F1.



fast forward to the last part (19:59) with the different vibration frequencies! Do you guys think it could be implemented in something like the suspension to control the stiffness based on speed-induced vibration without being called active suspension?

DISCLAIMER: I have absolutely no engineering background and i'm probably spitting non-sense lmao

[JordanMugen]

Four seasons in, we see the entire field of cars are now derivatives of the RB18, 19, and 20. I don't mean this as a trite insult to the other teams, it's just a statement of fact. Good designs are copied.

That's motor racing!

IIRC everyone copied the mid-engined layout of Cooper(?) and few decided to persist with front-engined Grand Prix cars.

[Of course the earlier Auto Union was also mid-engined, but that didn't necessarily provide handling advantages yet (due to tyres? the sheer size of the engine?) and wasn't widely copied.]

[TeamKoolGreen]

These regulations were a success. Anyone who watched F1 prior to 2022 would have seen that cars could not follow each other without cooking off the tires after 3-5 laps. This does not happen anymore. Cars go wing to gearbox for laps on end.

Instead of improving and evolving on this concept, they are getting rid of the floors because the new Frankenstein power units couldn't handle the drag. All they had to do was reduce the size of the wings and give the cars spec part ride control to help the drivers. Ah well, we will have to wait for the early 2030's for that. After this 2026 experiment brings us back to the malaise of 2014.

All of these goodbyes to DRS too will look funny when it is back in 5 years. That is another thing that could have evolved too instead of creating new problems. But F1 is big business and politics now and thats what ruins everything

[jjn9128]

These regulations were a success. Anyone who watched F1 prior to 2022 would have seen that cars could not follow each other without cooking off the tires after 3-5 laps. This does not happen anymore. Cars go wing to gearbox for laps on end.

Instead of improving and evolving on this concept, they are getting rid of the floors because the new Frankenstein power units couldn't handle the drag. All they had to do was reduce the size of the wings and give the cars spec part ride control to help the drivers. Ah well, we will have to wait for the early 2030's for that. After this 2026 experiment brings us back to the malaise of 2014.

All of these goodbyes to DRS too will look funny when it is back in 5 years. That is another thing that could have evolved too instead of creating new problems. But F1 is big business and politics now and thats what ruins everything

On this point, I've a feeling the FiA may be looking to regulate car wake in the next aero reg set. Maybe allowing them to free up some of the constraints on geometry.

[mzso]

These regulations were a success. Anyone who watched F1 prior to 2022 would have seen that cars could not follow each other without cooking off the tires after 3-5 laps. This does not happen anymore. Cars go wing to gearbox for laps on end.

Instead of improving and evolving on this concept, they are getting rid of the floors because the new Frankenstein power units couldn't handle the drag. All they had to do was reduce the size of the wings and give the cars spec part ride control to help the drivers. Ah well, we will have to wait for the early 2030's for that. After this 2026 experiment brings us back to the malaise of 2014.

All of these goodbyes to DRS too will look funny when it is back in 5 years. That is another thing that could have evolved too instead of creating new problems. But F1 is big business and politics now and thats what ruins everything

Yeah, now it's 4-6 laps. The regs were a (partial) success for like half a season, after that it was comprmised on health/safety grounds. The overtaking is just as bad as in 2021. They may be slightly closer, but but they can't overtake better.

Ross Brawn said that the regulations need to be maintained to keep dirty air down. How much the FIA followed up on that? In no way whatsoever. They did nothing.
Even in 2022 we saw in the rain that the Red Bull successfully shoved the front tire wake out of the way to the sides...

It's not that I have any faith in the 2026 regs. I expect it's main accomplishments in creating dangerous situations, when someone with full deployment closes up on someone with full regen. Probably easily in qualifying, but sometimes also in races do to a mistake or error.

[FW17]

Yeah, now it's 4-6 laps. The regs were a (partial) success for like half a season, after that it was comprmised on health/safety grounds. The overtaking is just as bad as in 2021. They may be slightly closer, but but they can't overtake better.

Austria 2025 had the 2 fastest cars close to each other, following was never an issue with these regulations.

Overtaking was something FIA had the tools to address. Early from the rule set it was known that the tow was less when cars get closer due to lower drag to previous generations. All were in a fantasy world that a straight without DRS was adequate overtaking without considering the lack of lap time difference between the 2 cars.

DRS should have been left free to use anywhere and everywhere for the following cars. F1 did not want blocking but they were hypocritical in having DRS and clean racing.

[mzso]

Yeah, now it's 4-6 laps. The regs were a (partial) success for like half a season, after that it was comprmised on health/safety grounds. The overtaking is just as bad as in 2021. They may be slightly closer, but but they can't overtake better.

Austria 2025 had the 2 fastest cars close to each other, following was never an issue with these regulations.

Overtaking was something FIA had the tools to address. Early from the rule set it was known that the tow was less when cars get closer due to lower drag to previous generations. All were in a fantasy world that a straight without DRS was adequate overtaking without considering the lack of lap time difference between the 2 cars.

DRS should have been left free to use anywhere and everywhere for the following cars. F1 did not want blocking but they were hypocritical in having DRS and clean racing.

For a short while they were close... And like three races ago Russel was only limping after trying to overtake for a few laps, and his teammate on older tires was much faster and nearly caught up to him by the end.

[TeamKoolGreen]

These regulations were a success. Anyone who watched F1 prior to 2022 would have seen that cars could not follow each other without cooking off the tires after 3-5 laps. This does not happen anymore. Cars go wing to gearbox for laps on end.

Instead of improving and evolving on this concept, they are getting rid of the floors because the new Frankenstein power units couldn't handle the drag. All they had to do was reduce the size of the wings and give the cars spec part ride control to help the drivers. Ah well, we will have to wait for the early 2030's for that. After this 2026 experiment brings us back to the malaise of 2014.

All of these goodbyes to DRS too will look funny when it is back in 5 years. That is another thing that could have evolved too instead of creating new problems. But F1 is big business and politics now and thats what ruins everything

Yeah, now it's 4-6 laps. The regs were a (partial) success for like half a season, after that it was comprmised on health/safety grounds. The overtaking is just as bad as in 2021. They may be slightly closer, but but they can't overtake better.

Ross Brawn said that the regulations need to be maintained to keep dirty air down. How much the FIA followed up on that? In no way whatsoever. They did nothing.
Even in 2022 we saw in the rain that the Red Bull successfully shoved the front tire wake out of the way to the sides...

It's not that I have any faith in the 2026 regs. I expect it's main accomplishments in creating dangerous situations, when someone with full deployment closes up on someone with full regen. Probably easily in qualifying, but sometimes also in races do to a mistake or error.

Cars can follow for basically whole stints. The reason there's no overtaking is because the field spread is miniscule. And it has little to do with dirty air. If all the cars are within a second , there isn't enough variance for overtaking. Period.

The floors and the whole 2022 concept was scrapped because of the new Frankenstein power units. Not because they thought these new (same old) flat floors were going to be any good for following. They tried everything for 15 years with flat floors and nothing worked. The only time following improved was with the tunnel floors

[mzso]

Cars can follow for basically whole stints. The reason there's no overtaking is because the field spread is miniscule. And it has little to do with dirty air. If all the cars are within a second , there isn't enough variance for overtaking. Period.

Writing out "period" won't make you less wrong, just annoying.

[dans79]

The floors and the whole 2022 concept was scrapped because of the new Frankenstein power units. Not because they thought these new (same old) flat floors were going to be any good for following. They tried everything for 15 years with flat floors and nothing worked. The only time following improved was with the tunnel floors

It has nothing to do with the floors. Cars can't follow because even the most junior aerodynamicist at a back marker team knows outwash is good for them and bad for cars behind.

[mzso]

It's funny that Tombazis gives themselves a "B or a C" when they did F-ing nothing to prevent dirty ruining racing, again. They dropped these new regs, which were completely defeated by the end of the years. The only thing they did was the (typically compromised) raising of the floor to avoid bouncing, which probably made the situation worse.
It's really lame excuse that they didn't have enough support from teams. They can and did change aero regs before unilaterally. They changed the floors from 2020 to 2021, also they restricted the bargeboards the same way.